


A Difficult Man

by Draco_sollicitus



Series: Bantering Damerey [8]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Arguing, Bickering as Flirting, Episode IX Spoilers, F/M, Falling In Love, Feels, Happy Ending, Resolved Sexual Tension, Smut, TRoS Spoilers, The Rise of Skywalker Compliant, flangst, talking in code
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-24 16:54:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21981259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draco_sollicitus/pseuds/Draco_sollicitus
Summary: Rey does not know why Poe Dameron has to be sodifficult.Ever since Crait, he's been getting under her skin, arguing and bickering and generally being a very difficult man. When the tension between them becomes undeniable, Rey and Poe begin to handle their dynamic in a very new way[aka Rey calling Poe "a difficult man" is definitely a Code they use]
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Rey
Series: Bantering Damerey [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1577284
Comments: 29
Kudos: 376





	A Difficult Man

**Author's Note:**

> Hello and welcome to some fluffy smut I wrote after I finally, finally watched The Rise of Skywalker. 
> 
> This fic is TROS-compliant and therefore there are **SPOILERS**
> 
> The kiss happened in this 'verse and will be addressed
> 
> Other than that: Rey and Poe have been having sex almost since Crait in this fic, and when Rey calls him "a difficult man" in TROS, she's using the code they use for when they want to go and *ahem* break the tension between them.
> 
> Here there be **warnings**  
>  Spoilers for TROS  
> Sex (woman on top/man on top)  
> Face-riding  
> General Sexual Tension

It’s hot in the jungle by mid-afternoon: a different kind of hot than the desert ever offered. Rey feels like there’s a river of sweat pouring between her shoulder blades, and tinkering with one of the few X-Wings the Resistance has left isn’t exactly helping her cool down.

And neither, for that matter, is one of their pilots.

“Why are you always in such a bad mood?” Rey whips a wrench into a toolbox and glares at Poe, who turns bright red and splutters incoherently. “Hydrospanner.” She jabs her finger at the box, and Poe passes her the right tool without looking.

“I’m not in a bad mood,” Poe argues.

“Breep-brooo,” BB-8 interjects, and Poe stares incredulously at the droid.

“I thought you were on _my_ side, buddy!”

“Brii-brii-boop.”

“We’re all on the same side, flyboy,” Rey points out, tossing the hydrospanner back at him. She pokes at something on the underside of the X-Wing, and it lights up with a flash. 

“I’m not in a bad mood,” Poe repeats.

“You’ve been in a bad mood since Crait.” Rey jams another tool into the circuitry and it sparks dangerously again. Poe grips Rey’s arm and tugs her away from the plume of smoke, and she coughs and waves a hand in front of her eyes. “And I had that under control!”

“Yeah, yeah, sorry I didn’t let you blind yourself.” Poe shakes his head in disbelief. “And you didn’t even _know_ me before Crait; how do you know this isn’t my normal mood?”

“That’s what I’m saying!” Rey drags a hand across her forehead, and Poe tracks the movement (something she notices after trying to survive in the desert - Rey knows when someone’s watching her movements, and while usually people have watched her in the past to try and steal her haul or try to gauge if she’d put up a fight in a tussle over water, Poe doesn’t watch her for that reason, and she isn’t imagining how the black of his eyes expands, and she isn’t imagining the coil of heat in her stomach when she catches him watching her is something very, very different from how she felt when other scavengers watched her on Jakku).

“If this is your normal mood, you’re always in a bad mood.” Rey remembers to finish her thought; the murky, humid air of the jungle moon they’re hiding out on does nothing to help her focus. In fact, things are pretty hazy right now.

Come to think of it, things are usually pretty hazy when she stands next to Poe. 

“You’ve only known me for what, four months?” Poe shrugs and wipes his hands on a rag; he offers it to Rey, and she wipes her hands as well. 

“Four months and four days,” Rey confirms. 

Keeping track of days isn’t exactly a habit she’s kicked.

“Right. That’s not that long a time. And things haven’t exactly been, you know, _great_ since the whole run-from-the-First-Order-and-watch-your-friends-die thing.”

“I guess not,” Rey agrees. It _has_ been a stressful four months and four days. 

“Right. So, I’m saying: don’t judge me based on these last few months.” Poe takes a step closer to her, and Rey doesn’t take a step back. There’s a thrill of excitement in her gut that she felt meeting Han Solo, or leaving Jakku for the first time, or calling the lightsaber to her hand: but, she’s just looking at Poe, Poe and his very pink, very soft-looking mouth, and his dark eyes, so she can’t imagine _why_ she’s so -

Oh.

Oh, kriff.

“When should I start judging, you, then?” Rey asks, her voice lower than she expected. “If not now?” Her eyes dart down to his mouth and back to his eyes.

Poe licks his lip. 

“I don’t know, Rey. You tell me.”

“Broo-bloo-bwoop?”

Rey flushes from the back of her neck into her ankles at BB-8’s question.

“Yeah, buddy.” Poe’s staring openly at her mouth now, and Rey’s well aware of the tree two feet behind her. “If she lets me.”

“Lets you?” Rey asks, raising her eyebrows.

“Yeah. If you say yes -- well, and if you promise to not throw me into a tree after.” Poe manages to tease her even when he has her heart fluttering in her chest, and Rey has half a mind to call her staff to her hand and smack him with it.

“I’d never-” Rey huffs, angrily (partly because she _might,_ if a person caught her off-guard), and glowers up at him, as the land they’re standing on is slightly sloped, giving him the higher ground. “You’re so-”

“Charming?” Poe murmurs, tilting his head and taking another step in.

“Difficult,” Rey corrects, swallowing and finding that her throat is dry. She studies his face, trying to figure out when he’s going to make his move, but he takes another step in and she doesn’t step away. “You’re difficult, Poe Dameron.”

She wonders what his mouth tastes like, and the thought sends more heat down her spine.

“I won’t kiss you until you tell me you want me to,” Poe points out, and Rey scoffs.

“You might have to wait awhile,” Rey jabs, and Poe seems to take a step backwards. 

He really meant it. And now he thinks _she_ doesn’t want to-

Oh _kriff._

“Of course I do,” Rey says hotly, forgetting to be embarrassed. 

“Well, I don’t know,” Poe’s grinning though, teasing and sweet, swaying towards her again.

“See? You’re impossi-”

Poe’s mouth is on hers a second later, effectively cutting her off. Another second later, and her back is against the tree, and the heat of the moon is _nothing_ compared to the feeling of Poe crowding into her, his hands firm on her waist, his tongue running along her bottom lip. It’s her first kiss and it tastes a bit like a spark of electricity down her fingertips and through her heart and down into her stomach, and Rey doesn’t recognize the sound she makes when Poe runs his hand up her side, languid-slow like syrup and tangles his fingers in her hair.

He tugs her hair out of her braids, she thinks, but she can’t think too much because she returns the favor and slips her hands into his curls, scratching against his scalp by accident, and everything is _hot_ and _not enough_ and _why is he kissing her like he wants to occupy the same space as her_ and -

Oh _kriff,_ that’s an idea.

“Bwwwoooop!”

“Buddy.” Poe rests his forehead against Rey’s, and she notices they’re both panting. Poe’s eyes are closed, and sweat’s curving down his temple, into his sideburns, and Rey wonders if it would taste like salt or sugar on her tongue because Poe tasted a hell of a lot sweeter than she thought he would. “Can we, uh, have some privacy.”

“Boop-beeeeeeo.”

“Right. Of course the surveillance team is returning from their mission in the next five minutes.” Poe opens his eyes and smiles regretfully at Rey. She has an idea what he’s about to do, and she doesn't like it, so she grips his shirt and pulls him in slightly.

Poe kisses her sweetly that time, but it doesn’t make the fire under her skin any less to be kissed gently; if anything, it makes it warmer. 

“Brrrop!”

“Yes, BeeBee, I’ll let go of Poe.” Rey grumbles and pushes him away slightly, aware that her hair is half-hanging down her face. They take a moment and straighten out their clothes and hair - and, given that they’re in the middle of a public space, not a five minute walk from the main part of base, Rey suddenly feels paranoid that _someone_ saw them kissing.

“We’ll… finish this later?” Poe gestures between them, and Rey, who has a hand to her mouth already to try and keep the phantom feeling of Poes lips against hers, can only nod. 

“Later,” she repeats quietly, and Poe’s smile is brighter than she’s ever seen it.

He walks away, and Rey returns to the toolbox to finish up on Blue Six.

BB-8 rolls over to her as she grabs a soldering iron. It beeps rapidly at her, and Rey considers its statement before nodding.

“He does seem like he’s in a better mood now,” she agrees before giggling and pushing it out of her mind for the time being.

* * *

“Why do you have to be so kriffing,” Rey groans and tosses her hair back, “difficult?”

Poe’s hips jerk, driving his cock up into her at a different, sharper angle than before, and Rey cries out at the unexpected movement; she puts her hands on his chest, his heart pounding under her right hand, her nails digging into his skin lightly, and Poe wraps his hands around her wrists before smoothing them up her arms, skimming them along until he reaches her chest and can cup her breasts. 

Poe thumbs both her nipples with torturous lightness, and Rey’s breath staggers again; her eyes close, and her hips falter from where they’ve been twisting and lifting in a teasing rhythm. 

“Sunshine,” Poe chokes out, throwing his head back when she squeezes around him and grinds down, trying to race him to the finish. “Oh gods-”

“So difficult,” Rey repeats, thinking back to how he’d been so careless with their run earlier that day. He’d almost been shot by Troopers: _twice._ She feels pleasure building in her core, and she whimpers slightly as she lowers herself, trying to chase the feeling. “You’re a,” he tilts his hips up, jarring the breath from her lungs for a second, “a d-difficult man, Poe Dameron.”

It’s something she’s said a lot in the last two months since Poe first kissed her.

“Mhm,” Poe nods, past the point of argument. His hand slides down her stomach, his fingers slipping through the thatch of dark curls until his thumb finds her clit and circles quickly, the way she likes. Rey bares her teeth and half-snarls through the rush of heat in her system. “Yep. Uh-huh. Most difficult.” He throws his head back, exposing the line of his throat, and for a wild second, Rey considers biting down on it. “So difficult. That’s - that’s me.”

“Poe,” Rey cries out in a strangled voice, clenching around him. “Gods.”

She collapses, still coming, on his chest, and Poe wraps his arms around her, planting his feet on the bed and driving his cock into her rapidly. Rey closes her eyes and tries not to scream from how good it feels, but she’s sure she fails because Poe’s laughing as he comes, and as they lie there in a daze afterwards, Poe’s cock growing soft but still not quite slipping out of her body, Rey isn’t sure she can quite remember why she was so sure he was difficult to begin with.

* * *

Poe Dameron does _not_ know how to close his mouth.

Like when they’re talking to a parts dealer, eight months after Crait. They’d all agreed Rey would do the talking because she’s more familiar with the inner-workings of the ships _and_ of the parts market as a former Scavenger, but suddenly, Poe’s stepping in when the Hutt-minion Rey’s bartering with won’t let up on the price of a bio-converter, and their conversation turns heated.

“Are we really gonna argue over this?” Poe jabs his finger at the bio-converter and glares at their host. Rey shoots daggers at Poe, but he doesn’t notice (Finn does). “We all know this is a hunk of junk, pal-”

“Hunk of junk?” Their host does _not_ appreciate that. 

The argument escalates, as arguments often do, and one tense Corellian standoff later, they’re scrambling back to the Falcon, parts clutched in their arms and a lot of credits lighter in the pocket. 

“I had that handled!” Rey snaps at Poe as they slide into the pilot seats and intiatie takeoff. Thank the Maker Chewie isn’t here, Rey thinks viciously, or he’d rip Poe’s arms off. “You can’t talk like that to one of the Hutts’ - they’ll kill you!”

“A lotta people have tried to kill me, and so far, no one’s succeeded,” Poe points out glibly as they punch through the clouds and break past atmo, bursting into Hyperspace.

“Guys.” Finn pinches the bridge of his nose from the backseat. “Can we - can _you_ not argue for, like, five minutes?”

“No!” Rey and Poe snap at the same time, and Finn holds his hands up with a groan. 

“Why am I not surprised?” Rey asks while Poe quickly checks the star chart to make sure they’re on a decent route. 

“Surprised about what?”

“Surprised that a lot of people have tried to kill you.”

“Hmmph.” Poe glares at her, and Rey tries very hard not to smile at him because he is stupidly cute when he glares like that, but she assumes he won’t take it well if she starts giggling at him when he’s worked up. “You’re one to talk.”

“I’m one to-” Rey splutters, outraged suddenly, and she’s glad she didn’t let him know she thought he was cute a second ago. “What does _that_ mean?”

“It means that I’m not the only person who bumps into murder attempts every five seconds.” Rey scoffs and glares out the starviewer.

“Maybe I’ll go on a mission with Connix next time,” Finn says thoughtfully from the back seat. “Connix and Jess. They don’t shout at each other.”

“It’s true, Rey! Or are you forgetting the whole bounty hunter poodoostorm from two weeks ago because _I_ sure don’t-”

“-that wasn’t a normal occurrence, and you know it-”

“And besides, we know that I’m much better at getting _out_ of those sort of situations than the rest of us-”

“Why you stuck-up, half-witted--” Rey scrambles for an end to that sentence, and something prompts her to finish with, “--scruffy-looking nerfherder!”

“I am _not_ stuck-up!” Poe protests, and his hand goes to his jaw as though he’s also contemplating pushing back on ‘scruffy.’ 

“Come to think of it, I don’t think Snap’s ever tried to kill one of his mission partners.” Finn props his chin on his hand and stares at the controls. “I wonder what he’s up to right now.”

“I can’t!” Rey throws her hands up in the air. “If you aren’t stuck-up, then you’ve got to be the - the - the most difficult person I’ve ever met-”

“Difficult?” Poe’s eyes darken, and she sees them dart to the door panel behind them. “You think I’m difficult?”

“Yep.” Rey nods and stands up, brushing imaginary dirt off her leggings. “And I think I need to cool down.”

“Meditation?” Finn asks, and Rey nods vaguely as she walks past him.

“Mhm.”

“Sure.” Finn rolls his eyes, and Rey feels ridiculous for not telling him that she has half a mind to take their co-pilot in the back and fuck his brains out on the narrow cot in one of the sleeping quarters because _somehow_ Finn knows that’s what she’s about to do anyway.

She can sense Poe standing up by the time she’s almost to the wet bar that exists, for some reason, on the Falcon. 

“Lemme guess.” Rey can hear Finn’s droll voice from this far away. “You _also_ have to go cool down.”

“Yep.”

Rey smirks when she hears Poe start to jog when he hits the corridor; she gets to the door of the sleeping quarters a half-second before he does, and Poe’s hand hits the control panel before she can reach it.

They tumble into the room, and a scramble of clothing later, Rey’s wearing only her tunic, her leggings discarded in the corner, and Poe’s shirtless, his pants undone enough for him to jerk his cock while Rey sits as primly as she can on the cramped bunk, her cunt over his mouth as she rides his face.

His stubble feels delicious when it scrapes just-so against her heated, sensitive skin — but she can’t let him know that, or he’ll realize _scruffy_ was never an insult. 

“You’re so - _gods_ ,” Rey moans, and she hears him chuckle into her core. “No, you aren’t a god, Dameron, get over it.” His tongue dips inside her, his nose pressed against her clit as he fucks her with his tongue, and Rey’s fingers scrabble at the metal hull of the ship. “Force, Poe.” 

He hums and it resonates inside her, and Rey half-laughs as she tosses her head back, one hand in Poe’s curls. “You know, I think this is the _only_ time you don’t talk, Commander.”

One of Poe’s hands comes up to pinch her nipple, and Rey’s answering laugh is wild and rough and real.

* * *

“Am I being difficult?” Poe asks her, quietly, his eyes warm and strangely desperate the day after a battle where they both almost died. 

They hadn’t even been arguing, Rey realizes after she nods. They’d just been sitting in the mess, Finn absent from their meal as he went to go over plans with Snap and Kin, and Poe hadn’t taken his eyes off her face, hungrier for her than he was for food.

Rey realizes, when they’re halfway to the private bunk Poe has as an officer in the Resistance, that she hasn’t really thought him difficult for weeks now. 

She also realizes when he’s inside her, his body curved over hers, his mouth on her neck as he pants words into her skin in a language she doesn’t know, that something about Poe Dameron makes her ache and ache and ache inside her chest, in the place she’s come to associate with words like _home_ and _family_ and _real._

She doesn’t let herself realize anything else, and when Poe drags his mouth to hers to kiss her, his tongue hot and firm inside her mouth, Rey cups his jaw before sliding her hand between their bodies, intending to reach for where they’re joined, but she brushes past the silver necklace he wears instead, and Poe spills inside of her without further warning.

(Rey realizes they’re both crying, but they don’t say anything else about it)

* * *

“You know what you are?” Rey asks, already smiling because as angry as they are with each other, this will let him know that she can’t be _angry_ with him, not really, not forever. 

“What?” Poe’s in a bad mood, again, she recognizes a beat too late. They haven’t had time to be _difficult_ together in weeks, not since Leia ramped up Rey’s Jedi training. 

“You’re difficult,” Rey says, still smiling because she wants to smile when she looks at Poe, even if he _did_ set her ship on fire. “Really difficult.”

“You…” Poe shakes his head, angrily, and Rey digs in because they _have_ to have time, even if they’re on a deadline with the fate of the galaxy and all that.

“You’re a difficult man,” she finishes as sweetly as she can, tucking the smile away in the corner of her mouth and smirking at Poe the way she _knows_ drives him crazy.

“You’re a-” Poe cuts himself off and a few moments later, he’s storming away.

And then Rey gets a vision that changes everything and it feels as though the Force wants her on a path that curves far, far away from this particular difficult man.

* * *

After the celebrations and the fireworks and the medals of honor, Rey’s exhausted into her bones.

So, when Poe sidles up to her outside her quarters, a smile on his face, she doesn’t quite know what he wants.

“What?” Rey asks, a hand on her control panel. 

“I was wondering if you, uh, how you were feeling.” 

“Shouldn’t you be with Zorii?” Rey asks it without spite or malice. Zorii Bliss was a wonderful ally to them. Is a wonderful ally. She’d helped them when she had nothing to gain, and came back to help them fight the Final Order. Rey can’t begrudge her something as simple as a pilot’s favor.

Even if that pilot is one of the two lights that make up the core of Rey’s galaxy.

“Zorii is an old friend.” Poe leans against the wall and gives her an odd look; not judgemental, but more … focused. Rey can’t think about what it might mean right now. “And … and she and I haven’t been … haven’t… it’s been a long time, Rey.’

“Okay.” She nods and types her passcode into her panel; she walks through the doors and Poe follows her.

Rey doesn’t mind him being in her space, but she’s so, so tired and hopes he won’t ask her any important questions right now, like:

_Finn said you died, Sunshine, is that true?_

_You didn’t happen to, uh, bump into the man who tortured us both today, right?_

“You said I was difficult,” Poe blurts out, smiling at her nervously as she eyes the bed. “Earlier,” he continues when she looks over at him, and something in his smile falters. He clears his throat. “You, uh, said I was - difficult, earlier.”

Rey nods. “I did.” 

“So, er, am I still being-”

Rey bursts into tears and covers her face with her hands, and seconds later, Poe’s wrapping his arms around her. “Hey,” he shushes her softly, nuzzling against the side of her head; Rey wonders if she should push him away, if that would be the right thing to do, but Poe Dameron is sturdy and warm and kind, and his Force signature soothes where others she has felt today have only hurt her. “What’s wrong?”

“I- I- I-” Poe guides her to the bed, and she cries a little longer, horrible, gulping breaths. When she manages to get control of herself again, she sniffs and wipes her face gracelessly with the back of her arm wrappings. “I’m tired,” Rey cries, unable to say anything else right now. “I d-don’t want t-to have sex right-”

“Okay.” Poe rubs her back soothingly, and Rey leans into the touch like a needy Loth-Cat. “We really don’t have to have sex, Rey, seriously, I’m just so kriffing glad you’re okay.”

“If you knew,” Rey shakes her head and shivers. “If you knew what I almost did today - what I _did_ do-”

“We aren’t our pasts,” Poe interjects softly. “And I’d never hold yours against you. I figure you believe that more than you woulda before, huh?”

Rey sniffs again and nods, miserably. “I kissed Ben Solo,” she admits, cringing at the thought of Poe knowing _that_ about her. “Before he died.”

“...so did I,” Poe muses, and Rey stiffens in shock. When she looks at him, his grin is rueful. “We were kids though. Hadn’t really ... committed all those murders yet.”

“You’re so…” Rey bites her lip, smiling despite herself, and Poe’s eyes are impossibly gentle.

“Difficult?” He asks softly.

Rey nods, and then she’s crying again, so Poe navigates them until they’re lying down, his arms wrapped around her. He holds her until her breath calms, and he kisses her forehead, her nose, her cheeks, brushing tears from her face as he does so. 

They lie together in silence for a few minutes. Then: 

“I might be difficult,” Poe admits, staring up at the ceiling, “but loving you, Rey? So easy.”

She doesn’t have any words to answer yet because she presses her face to his chest and cries, and after Poe’s pressed a hand to her back and his lips to her hair, he lets a few tears slip as well.

“Sweetheart,” he whispers into her hair. “Sunshine.”

“Poe,” Rey answers, her thin fingers clutching at his shirt like it’s the last foot of rappelling rope at the bottom of a shipwreck. 

“We haven’t talked about it before,” Poe says, his voice half-broken with hope already, “Not exactly. And I didn’t wanna ask, not when one or both of us might have died in the war, but … gods, Rey, I know I’m a difficult man, but I really would like to be _your_ difficult man.”

She realizes what he’s asking a heartbeat later, and she smiles into his thin shirt, tired but warming with hope the longer she stays with Poe. 

And it makes her answer all the easier:

“I’d like that too,” Rey whispers, and she knows Poe is smiling without having to look.

They hold each other through the worst of the storm, and while things might not be easy right now, Rey thinks that they’ll be able to figure the rest out together.

**Author's Note:**

> THANKS FOR READING AND sorry for how unabashedly sentimental I am in my smut


End file.
